Based` on a play by John Cameron. Shot in Brisbane. 30 minutes.
Premise
Set during the off-season in an Australian fishing town, Shell Bay, "somewhere near Melbourne". A guest house has only one boarder, Harry Nichols. He meets a spinster, Madge, likes her, but flees marriage, returns the next year more determined and finds her unhappily married to someone else, Bill Martin. The guest house is run by Mrs Gray, who is married to Bert and has a daughter Sue.
Cast
- Nonie Stewart as the local shopkeeper Madge Bennett
- John Nash as school teacher Harry Nichols
- Reg Cameron as Bill Martin
- Betty Ross as Mrs Gray
- Elaine Cusick as SueWilkinson
- Donald McTaggart as Madge's brother Don Bennett
- Vic Hughes as Mrs Gray's husband Bert Gray
Production
It was the fourth play produced at the ABC's Brisbane studios at Toowong, following Vacancy at Vaughan Street, Dark Brown and Ring Out Wild Bells.
It went for 30 minutes. It was produced by John Croyston and written by Melbourne writer John Cameron. The outdoor scenes were filmed at Woody Point. Croyston did a location scout of Brisbane's northern suburbs before selecting Woody Point. Beach scenes were shot near Margate.
It was Nonie Stewart's first part since returning from overseas in July 1964. She had left Brisbane for Canada in 1957 and performed in more than fifty shows in Vancouver.
The only non local member of the cast was Vic Hughes who was a presenter of Partyland.
Elaine Cusick was a Brisbane actor who had worked extensively in radio and appeared in TV productions of The Mystery of the Hansom Cab and The One Day of the Year. She had recently returned from an 18 month trip overseas and was going to go to Melbourne when she received an offer to audition for The Quiet Season.It was the first TV role for Reg Cameron and John Nash.
There were dry runs on April 14,25,27, 29 and 30 and May 2 and 3. There were camera rehearsals on May 5-6.
The production was videotaped on May 5-6 at Studio 41,600 Coronation Drive, Toowong.
Producer - John Croyston. Technical producer - Noel King. Lighting - John Dunphy. Floor manager - Hollis Crompton. Script assistant - Diana Drake. Designer - Laurie Johnson. Make up and wardrobe - Mrs P Hands. Graphics - R. Philpott.
Reception
The Sydney Morning Herald noted it was the fourth television play to be produced by ABC's Brisbane station, and called it "a horror", comparing it highly unfavourably with the "slick, high professional and sometimes world-class productions" being produced in Sydney at the time.
The Age thought Nash and Stewart "played their parts competently" but felt "it was distracting how abruptly one scene changed into the next. This faulty technique gave a measure of jerkiness to an otherwise smooth performance."
The Bulletin said "Intelligently produced by John Croyston, it [the show] had everything but a good time-slot. It was buried after the late news. The duty announcer urged viewers to stay up for it, and I hope some did. They would have found that “The Quiet Season” was one of those small plays requiring sensitive management, and this Croyston achieved in a masterly way. He also used outside film of trees, rocks and waves to suggest the locale, passages of time, even action which had occurred. The story... is not wildly dramatic material, nor a new plot, but it has poignant, bitter sweet possibilities, and, for once, these were fully realised by the camera and the actors. Often, darting close-ups were used to catch a fleeting expression, a small, quick gesture. Croyston, better known for his radio productions, will be worth watching as a television man."
 |
| National Archives of Australia |
 |
| National Archives of Australia |
 |
| National Archives of Australia |
 |
| Canberra Times 28 June 1965 p 1 |
 |
| The Age TV Guide 24 June 1965 p 2` |
 |
| National Archives of Australia |
 |
| National Archives of Australia |
 |
| National Archives of Australia |
 |
| SMH` 4 July 1965 p 68 |
 |
| Canberra Times 28 June 1965 p 1 |
 |
| National Archives of Australia |
 |
| National Archives of Australia |
 |
| The Age 3 July 1965 p 23 |
 |
| The Bulletin 7 August 1965 p 52 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Forgotten Australian TV Plays: The Quiet Season and Enough to Make a Pair of Sailor’s Trousers
by Stephen Vagg
July 24, 2021
Stephen Vagg’s latest article on forgotten Australian TV plays looks at a pair of love stories from the 1960s, Brisbane’s The Quiet Season and Sydney’s Enough to Make a Pair of Sailor’s Trousers.
One of the genres best suited to the television play was/is the love story; television’s intimacy and ability to use close ups and editing, not to mention stand-alone storylines, makes it particularly ideal for tales of the heart. One of the most famous television plays of all time was a love story: Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty. Others include the guy-cry-terminally-ill-sports-player-bromance Bang the Drum Slowly, and Ted Willis’ interracial love saga Hot Summer Night (filmed as Flames in the Street).
Early Australian television rarely tackled love head on. Perhaps there was unease at dealing with such emotional material; directors (who tended to be the ones who picked what scripts to film) preferred dealing with love as the motivating emotion in a thriller, say, or the subtext of a comedy, rather than an honest exploration of human emotions.
Nonetheless, there were some love stories: Dark Under the Sun told of the romance between a white woman and Aboriginal man. Vacancy in Vaughan Street concerned a middle-aged woman finding love at a boarding house. Season in Hell concerned the doomed relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine. And there were two plays which I’m writing about today, The Quiet Season and Enough to Make a Pair of Sailor’s Trousers.
The Quiet Season was written by John Cameron, author of the groundbreaking TV play Outpost and later head of drama at the ABC. It’s set in a small town where a spinster/bachelorette shop keeper (Nonie Stewart) has a romance with a visiting boarder (John Nash) who is staying at a guest house. This runs for 30 minutes and was shot in Brisbane in 1965 at the ABC’s Toowong Studios, with some location work at Woody Point. I think it’s actually set in Victoria, though it could easily take place in the Sunshine State. (Random fact: Dark Under the Sun was written by a Brisbane writer, Chris Gardner who lived at Woody Point… which is part of Redcliffe, one time home of the Bee Gees, Rupert McCall and William McInnes. So, an artistic hotspot up there, clearly.)
The Quiet Season is a simple, effective tale, not as technically polished as Sydney/Melbourne productions around this time, it has to be admitted (they didn’t have the same amount of practice, of course), but moving, with impressive sets. The script is very much in the Marty mode of lonely, no-longer-young people trying to find love. (Another inspiration would be Terence Rattigan’s play Separate Tables, about lonely people at a boarding house… the influence of that play is clear on Vacancy on Vaughan Street too). You can access some information about The Quiet Season at the NAA.
Enough to Make a Pair of Sailor’s Trousers was made in 1967 as an episode of Australian Playhouse. It was written by Barbara Vernon, whose life and career stands as an inspiration to those worried the parade might have passed them by. Vernon was an Inverell radio announcer who wrote plays on the side for the local theatre company; one of said plays, The Multi Coloured Umbrella, was picked up by the Elizabethan Theatre Trust who gave it a stage production in 1957; a year later the play was filmed by the ABC. This production received criticism because of its frank depiction of sex (hey, it was 1958), causing the ABC to scurry away from filming an Australian script for the next 18 months. Vernon, to her credit, kept writing and the ABC, to its credit, gave her work. In 1967, they not only produced her script for Enough to Make a Pair of Sailor’s Trousers, they launched Bellbird (1967-77), which Vernon story edited as well as wrote, and turned out to be the first hit Aussie soapie.
Enough to Make a Pair of Sailor’s Trousers is a charming love story about a 17-year-old (Helen Morse) from the country staying with her sister (Heather Christie) in Sydney. Sister kicks her out so she can shag her boyfriend (Gary Shearston) (that’s what’s implied), and sister finds a romance with a sailor on leave (Allen Bickford). Their courtship involves walking around Sydney and visiting the then-being-built Opera house which is amazing. The key subplot concerns Christie’s and Shearston’s characters – he wants to marry her, but she doesn’t want to live in the country and she speaks some very feminist lines about wanting independence.
This play was a real surprise – well observed, with three dimensional characters, empathy and humour, nicely handled by director Pat Alexander. It does seem like an episode of, well, Bellbird but a very good episode of Bellbird, and you can see why Vernon made such a good fist of TV; she was a good writer. (You can read the whole script online here.) Helen Morse is utterly lovely – she had X factor from the beginning. Gary Shearston was a folk singer at the time, which is random.
Both The Quiet Season and Enough to Make a Pair of Sailor’s Trousers were perfectly decent, 30 minute tales that did credit to those who made them. And a reminder that Australians are perfectly capable of making decent love stories when they so choose.
No comments:
Post a Comment